W17 Current Activities in Risk Informing External Hazards Analysis

The objective of this session is to provide an overview of the latest research including agency and industry initiatives in risk-informing external hazards analysis. The following speakers and topics will be included in the session.

Dr. Meredith Carr will provide an overview of the NRC’s Probabilistic Flood Hazard Assessment Research Program.

Dr. Marc Levitan (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) will summarize NIST research on the characterization of high winds, including standardization of methods for wind speed estimation in tornadoes and other windstorms. Extreme wind climatology and mapping will also be addressed, including recently published design wind speed maps in the American Society of Civil Engineers 7-16 standard (Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures) and new tornado hazard maps currently under development.

Dr. Stephanie Devlin-Gill (Office of New Reactors/Division of Site Safety and Environmental Analysis) will present the status of implementing the Commission-approved framework for ongoing assessment of natural hazards at nuclear power plant sites, including infrastructure development to ensure that the framework is durable and executed consistently.

Dr. Fernando Ferrante (Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)) will discuss EPRI’s external hazard research activities that have been and are being pursued in its Risk and Safety Management Program. Major EPRI research activities on specific external hazards such as seismic, flooding, and high winds will be described, as well as considerations related to the integration of hazard information and the treatment of the hazards in probabilistic evaluations.

Drawing on her experience with the working group to update the external flooding section of the American Nuclear Society/American Society of Mechanical Engineers probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) standard, Dr. Michelle Bensi (University of Maryland) will discuss significant issues involved in integrating natural hazards information into nuclear power plant PRA models.